Dan Hall: Why Obama did not disown Rev. Wright

Barack Obama, who not so long ago was derided by some African-Americans as “not black enough,” now faces rejection by some white voters who see him as “too black.” What a tragedy that would be.

Dan Hall

Barack Obama, who not so long ago was derided by some African-Americans as “not black enough,” now faces rejection by some white voters who see him as “too black.” What a tragedy that would be.

Nearly all the commentary I have seen, even from Obama’s critics, has called his speech on race last week one of the most powerful in American political history. Some have gone so far as to compare it to Abraham Lincoln’s “A House Divided,” delivered during the run-up to the Civil War. It was a worthy successor to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream.”

They were, however, far different speeches, meant for far different audiences.

When King spoke in the America of 1963, the difference between wrong and right was clear: Either you accepted the tradition that you could bar people from restaurants, or from certain jobs, or from living in white neighborhoods because of the color of their skin — or you did not accept that, and you sought change.

That was 45 years ago. Millions of Americans, perhaps even the majority living today, had had not yet been born. The specific injustices that moved King are largely the stuff of history books. The racism experienced by African-Americans today is more about aftereffects, which show up in the segregation of our cities, crumbling urban schools and the huge population of young black men locked in prisons.

Moreover, as Obama acknowledged in his speech, in attempting to heal one set of grievances, we have created another: Many whites feel they are being blamed for the sins of their ancestors. They reject the idea that their children should be bused to schools across town, or that their son or daughter should get second-place consideration in college admissions.

It is no surprise that some people, for reasons of political partisanship, or sometimes outright racism, are slicing Obama’s words in ways that have no relationship to truth. A good many others, however, people of good conscience, feel honestly disappointed, even betrayed, that Obama did not go as far as they would have liked in denouncing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of Trinity Church in Chicago, and his friend and spiritual mentor for 20 years.

A video of Wright’s sermon damning America in the wake of 9/11 is playing all over television and the Internet. He is known for equally outrageous declarations on other occasions, such as his claim that AIDS resulted from a government plot to kill black people.

Wright’s ideas are not Obama’s ideas. The minister’s words “were not simply controversial,” Obama said. “They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America.”

He did not, however, throw his friend under the bus. “But this is not all I know about Rev. Wright,” he went on. “The man I met more than 20 years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor.” Wright served his country as a U.S. Marine, and for over 30 years led a church that houses the homeless, ministers to the needy, provides day care services, scholarships, and prison ministries.

In Wright’s raucously musical, dancing and hand-clapping church, Obama told us, he finds “the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.”

On many occasions, I have sat in black churches like Wright’s. I often cringed at some of what I heard from the pulpit, yet I saw what Obama sees: Those churches are not about hate; they are about faith, love, and hope. I was one of the few or sometimes even the only white present, yet the ministers and members welcomed me warmly.

I understand well why Obama concluded, “I can no more disown Rev. Wright than I can disown the black community.” Those who demand that are looking for the flip side of the easy rights and wrongs that moved King. Even if Obama had wanted to do that, he could not have — because in satisfying one group of voters, he would alienate the other.

When King spoke in August 1963, I was there in the crowd. I remember his words as coming in soaring crescendos, the thunderous bursts and crashes of a pipe organ. Obama’s speech last week came as the softer but more complex sound of a sax or an oboe. His words flowed from his heart, and they were right for our time.

Obama’s message, the one he demonstrates in his life story, is that there ought to be no such thing as “too white” or “too black.” Let’s accept him for what he is.